Malaria
All were very kind, and nothing had changed from the year
before, except that the baby had died and a new one was
coming, and the pretty daughter whose husband had deserted
her was wasting away with a strange disease due, they said, to
her having swallowed the shell of a nut by mistake. The two
boys were as jolly as ever, and the wife had a new blue bow to
her hair. As I crept to my bed on the terrace, she, with that
Persian insight into beauty which redeems so many faults,
told one of die servants to turn the brook into the little garden
below, so that its murmur might soothe me through the night.
I was, as a matter of fact, too tired to sleep, and lay enjoying
the quiet noise of the poplar leaves that moved one against the
other in the moonlight. In spite of the long day, no pain or
fever had returned. I felt wonderfully happy to be out of the
deathly Shah Rud, and up again in the hills. The stillness of
the mountain valley lay like an empty theatre round our village
and its waters; the night was full of peace; when suddenly a new
and strange crisis seized me: every ounce of life seemed to be
sucked away; I was shrivelled up with a withering dryness, soon
succeeded by floods of perspiration; and I knew by a slight
unpleasant shiver that this must be malaria.
This added complication was the last straw, and made it
impossible to leave again next morning. I lay gloomily in
bed, while various village acquaintances came to greet me,
among them 'Aziz, my good guide, with pleasure and concern
all over his face and with the surprising news that a Persian
doctor from the Caspian shore was spending a summer holiday
in a village only five hours' ride away. He had not brought
him because it would be so expensive, said 'Aziz. The doctor
refused to ride for ten hours during his holiday for less than
five tomans (ios.). But " Health is more than gold," said I,
or words to that effect, and sent Ismail off at once to fetch him.
He returned in the dusk with a young man neatly dressed in